Is It Reasonable to Love?

Mohamed Hadouch

John Wells

ENG 111-4131

20 nov 2017

Is it reasonable to love?

Love is a phenomenon that can take many forms. For example, there is love-passion (between two lovers), but there is also filial love (maternal love), love by compassion (which is the feeling of love accompanied by charity, as well as the love of friendship, or the love for the human race in general, which is called philanthropy. Love, however, is a type of relationship of particular relationships despite the possible diversity of its forms: to love is to give our heart and good will to another being than ourselves. It therefore appears spontaneously as a positive feeling, but is it still reasonable to love? And besides, to philosophize, is it not already going towards Love?

The love of humanity in general is not reasonable, because most of the time, people are disappointing. Human nature is such that we meet few sincere, faithful and loyal individuals. Thus, Chamfort declared: "Who is not misanthropic at 40 has never really loved men". So, when we do good around, few people really thank their benefactor. The proof is: in the Gospels, we are shown Jesus healing ten lepers, and only one comes back to thank him. Human nature seems ungrateful. Philanthropic love is too often a decoy because people think more about loving themselves than about loving others. Love is unreasonable also because it is more about spontaneous feeling and emotional intelligence than about rational intelligence. Love is a feeling from the heart that carries us beyond ourselves; but as it comes first from our sensible part rather than from our reasonable and reasoning part; he has the fire of passion that blinds. This is why there is a proverb: "love makes you blind". This blindness is also found in the love of kindness and in the love of union. Now let us analyze the blindness that makes love so often unreasonable.

We see that love is unreasonable, blind because it often comes to people who do not deserve it. Frequently, we love people that the circumstances of life make us meet rather than beings who deserve it intrinsically speaking. Since the heart must be attached to someone, it is enough to be there in the right place at the right time for love to appear. So, just go to a party gathering young people for "the twist of fate" works rather than it is a real choice. Which is valid for the love of union (love in the couple) and also valid for the love of kindness, as in friendship. In friendship, it is also often "the twist of fate" that operates rather than real discernment. For example, in school, students tend to bond with classmates rather than those from another class. The problem is that then love, and friendship seem to be more of a "lottery" than a reason; it is not surprising that these feelings are about people who do not necessarily deserve it. Love is sometimes so blind and unreasonable that there is not necessarily reciprocity. Also, the human heart natively attaches to its parents, but these can have a denatured behavior. There is no need to be an adult to experience the feeling of love; it suffices to let oneself go in the impulses of one's heart; but love appears all the more unreasonable as it is quite often non-reciprocal. As Carmen writes in Bizet's opera: "Love is child of Bohemia, if you do not love me, I love you". Love therefore seems unreasonable when it is a go without a return. Love is blind too when it is sexual (we speak in this case only of the love in the couple). Especially when young men are inexperienced and poorly educated; they pay more attention to the external beauty of women than to their inner beauty. Love is therefore unreasonable when it comes first from sexual impulses. Let it not be said that love in the couple may have nothing to do with the libido and impulses of the Eros (referring to the Greek go of sexual attraction); because the physical is still what we see first. So, if our soul seeing his partner for the first time exclaims "Here, it is not beautiful! »; it is very difficult then to counter this first impression related to the physical. What also shows is often unreasonable; it is a violent feeling (especially when it is linked to sexual impulses as in love in the couple). Even in friendship, love can easily become possessiveness and jealousy. Love, by its passionate tendency, thus carries us to excess feelings. Finally, what finally shows that love is unreasonable, especially in the couple, is that it is often connected to our childhood and our oedipal experience. Even way before Freud, philosophers like Descartes had already noticed this state of affairs. Thus, Descartes in his book, The Passions of the Soul, tells us of his spontaneous and uncontrollable attraction to women who reach adulthood, because as a child his first great friendship was an ugly girl (Descartes). Now, as Descartes points out, being ugly is a defect, not a quality, therefore the soul should rather be reluctant to attach itself to people who are ugly. Also, Descartes says that love is fundamentally unreasonable since it is related to our first impressions in childhood. But finally, what shows that love is essentially unreasonable is that we can fall in love with someone who is forbidden. For example, a woman who falls in love with a married man; society forbids him to be in love with this man, and will say that there is an adulterous sin. The drama of Romeo and Juliet further illustrates this unreasonable aspect of love when it goes against social conventions. If love were intrinsically a reasonable feeling, we would not see so many dramas and impossible love stories.